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Cameron Smith: Melbourne Storm 'haven't fired a shot yet'

Moments after Melbourne Storm claimed top spot on the NRL ladder with a gritty 12-6 victory over the New Zealand Warriors in Auckland, captain Cameron Smith declared the reigning premiers haven’t 'really fired a shot’ in 2018.

Moments after Melbourne Storm claimed top spot on the NRL ladder
with a gritty 12-6 victory over the New Zealand Warriors in
Auckland, captain Cameron Smith declared the reigning premiers
haven’t 'really fired a shot’ in 2018.

The Storm sit on equal points (28) with St George Illawarra and
South Sydney but are in first place thanks to a slightly superior
for-and-against with six rounds remaining.

Smith and co have now won seven straight games including
victories over top-eight sides the Warriors, St George Illawarra,
Sydney Roosters and the Brisbane Broncos.

But the veteran rake put his team-mates on notice with some
tough talk after their latest victory.

“We’ve certainly put ourselves in a very good position at this
stage of the season and really just off the back of playing some
tough football,” Smith said.

“Over the last eight weeks we’ve won a lot of close games, a lot
of matches where we haven’t necessarily been at our best but effort
and the willingness to stay in the fight has got us home.

“I think this year we’ve won three games by one point, so we
haven’t really blown any teams off the park consistently.

“So I think that’s where we really need to sit down and get
serious about our performances because looking across the games
that we’ve played this year, I don’t think we’ve really fired a
shot yet, to be honest.

“We’ve had a lot of scrappy wins like today where we didn’t
really throw too much at the opposition throughout the game but we
just were tough enough to stay in it.

“… We went through a little period where we scored 30-plus
points in three consecutive games (in Rounds six, seven and
eight).

“So that shows the capability of our side but we just need to
find that consistently ever week to try and make it a little easier
on ourselves in the matches that we play for the remainder of the
season.”

Coach Craig Bellamy conceded Storm’s attack can be better but
preferred to focus on his side’s impressive defence in recent
weeks.

“I think there’s a fair bit of work to be done, we’ve had three
half-backs this year so that makes it a little bit hard on the
combinations but we’ve certainly got the players there to start
playing with a bit more consistency in our attack,” Bellamy
said.

“... I like my footy teams to be tough and gritty so hopefully
we can continue doing that (defending well) and hopefully we can
sharpen up a bit with our attack.”

The Storm play Canberra, South Sydney, Cronulla, Parramatta,
Gold Coast and Penrith in the final six rounds of the regular
season.